In Praise of Nuns
Historic Kylemore Abbey is to close
It's downright unfashionable to speak up in support of nuns these days - to say we're indebted to them or suggest they might be entitled to our gratitude. We tend to dismiss the religious orders now that they no longer coordinate with our self-image as a prosperous, increasingly post-Catholic nation. It's almost as though we're embarrassed by nuns, seeing them as indigenous to the hungry decades when jobs were rare, emigration wasn't, and any class of a jalopy was a luxury let alone the SUVs clogging our roads today.
So the closure of Kylemore Abbey School after more than 80 years meets with a shrug in many quarters. "What can you do? Vocations have collapsed. If they wanted to keep the school going they should have brought in lay teachers" is a common reaction. And - whisper it - there's an underlying sense that nuns are tainted by association with the Catholic Church in Ireland. Compared with the notoriety attracted by certain bishops, priests and Christian Brothers, the hierarchical cover-ups and stonewalling, the paedophilia and sex scandals, there's been scarcely a whiff of discredit linked to the nuns. The only real exception is the Magdalene Laundries. But the nuns' relatively reputable record doesn't matter: perception is king, and the instinct is to lump everyone in together and disown the sisters. Such a response is mean-spirited, selective and just plain wrong. We do owe a debt of obligation to the convents, particularly in education. The overwhelming majority of adults in Ireland have had a Catholic education, which means they passed through the hands of nuns, Christian Brothers or priests. Inevitably some of us retain less than fond memories of our schooldays, but it's possible we'd feel that way regardless of where we were educated.
I had 14 years of schooling with the Loreto Order in Omagh - years I resented occasionally as the teenage hormones kicked in, but which gave me a solid grounding and an all-round education. The nuns were ambitious for their girls: they were not training them up to be wives but to establish careers and forge their way in the world. We were encouraged to believe we could be medics and lawyers (they were dubious about journalists) at a time when it was still less than common for women to enter the professions. I remember how excited they were when a former pupil became a TV camerawoman, breaching yet another male bastion.
Nuns were valuable role models for young women. They demonstrated it was possible to lead independent lives without men; that alternatives to being a wife and mother were available; that romantic love so idealised by society was not the only path to fulfilment. They dedicated themselves to their pupils and followed their progress through school and beyond. Theirs was a genuine and abiding interest which lay teachers, naturally caught up in their own family concerns, could not match. An additional benefit for those of us in the North was the way they fostered our sense of an Irish identity and helped us feel part of an all-island community.
I know some of my brothers had a different experience with the Christian Brothers. They point to the casual cruelty, the seemingly random nature of it, the way slower learners were brutalised because teachers did not differentiate between inability and intransigence. One of my brothers recalls going into the classroom a little early one morning to escape the teeming rain and playing a game of marbles with three friends while they waited. A Christian brother spotted them and all four were leathered mercilessly for it. They were eight years old. But that was close on 30 years ago and corporal punishment was acceptable then, fortunately it's no longer tolerated.
Of course the nuns hoped some of us would discover a vocation, and sometimes promoted the possibility, but teenage girls are inherently resilient to the notion of being brides of Christ, especially with a boys' school just around the corner. In fact, in an institution with almost 1,000 pupils, only one girl in my seven years at secondary school took the veil. And most of us were dumbfounded she could contemplate such a life of self-sacrifice.
Fast forward a couple of decades and becoming a member of a religious order is almost an anachronism, as the Kylemore closure reminds us. Two weeks ago in Rome, I met a young Irish monk who admitted he had joined an order based on the Continent because he believed the Catholic Church was damaged goods in Ireland.
Looking back, I recognise that there was good and bad nuns - as with any cross-section of society - but in general there was a notable absence of the arrogance which characterises the Catholic Church's chain of command. An example emerged recently on Bishop Eamon Casey's return, when Bishop of Clonfert Dr John Kirby told the media to butt out by high-handedly calling it "a closed issue" - as though no outstanding questions surrounding this watershed episode remained.
I can't help thinking the Catholic Church would not continue to ebb so low in Ireland if the men who govern it were more willing to take their cue from the nuns, who have shown themselves to be not just honorable but humble and adaptable. My Loreto Convent grammar school is entirely lay now, although with some in-put from the order. Occasionally I spot the sisters who taught me out and about in the town; although past retirement age, they visit hospital patients, pay calls to the elderly and are involved in the community in a positive way.
Instead of acceding to old age or bowing to trends, they continue to make a contribution - and in so doing they remain an example to the rest of us.
